Anti-vaccine mom changes mind

An article from a mother who was anti-vaccine until her daughter (and then the rest of the family) got the whooping cough. And still she feels “funny” about vaccination.

And yet I still wondered about that list of things that I would now, I suppose, have to surrender to and immunise my child against. Polio, for one — a couple of my parents’ pensioner friends still carry the limp left by their childhood polio, but none of my friends do, because it isn’t around any more. And diphtheria — what was that, even? I knew it had killed one of Queen Victoria’s daughters, but that wasn’t our reality.

The reason it wasn’t our reality was, of course, due to a continuous programme of immunisation. Duh. Diphtheria is a disease that still kills one in five infants it meets, even if they get treatment, their necks swelling up until they can no longer breathe. I have now seen a picture of a child whose neck was ravaged by diphtheria, bloated like a foie gras goose about to burst. I wish I could unsee it.